Cocoa butter is expensive and volatile. London ICE futures for cocoa crossed £8,400 per tonne in early 2026, up 340 percent over two years. Every confectioner and — increasingly — every cosmetic brand is shopping for alternatives. The industry answer for fifty years has been palm-stearin-based CBE, fractionated and blended to mimic cocoa butter's solid-fat content curve.
Palm, however, is no longer a clean story. EUDR compliance costs, NGO pressure, and consumer backlash have made palm-free positioning a commercial lever rather than a moral one. We believe the path forward is regional. Sal grows across 200,000 square kilometres of central India. Kokum grows exclusively on our coast. Between them, we have the fatty-acid profile and the thermal behaviour to match cocoa butter closely enough for most formulation purposes.
A CBE with zero palm and zero cocoa — that is the whole brief.
The intended structure is two grades from one plant: a cosmetic-grade line built to BIS IS 4707 and ISO 22716 discipline, and a food-grade line under FSSAI Central Licence with a HACCP plan and a segregated food-contact fill line. Neither line exists. No FSSAI application has been filed and no dispatch date can honestly be given.
